15 July 2002 Morning Edition

I - News wires/services /broadcast

AFP
· Security high as leaders of ex-Yugoslavia hold key summit
· NATO security in Bosnia up ahead of summit

Reuters
· U.N. condemns throat-cutting poster in Kosovo

Dpa
· Bosnian, Croatian, Yugoslav presidents to meet in Sarajevo

BBC
· Balkans leaders in historic summit

Chicago Tribune
· The Danger of a world court
· The ICC

B92
· Serbia faces further rail disruption
· Lilic freed of Serbian secret burden
· Labus looking to be "first among equals"

II - Newspapers/magazines

Financial Times
· COMMENT & ANALYSIS: The Wilsonian veneer of US foreign policy

The Washington Post
· Arrests Provoke Unrest in Kosovo

Security high as leaders of ex-Yugoslavia hold key summit

SARAJEVO, July 15 (AFP) - The leaders of Yugoslavia, Croatia and Bosnia were set to meet on Monday for a key summit on cooperation and reconciliation aimed at healing the wounds of the bloody wars that followed the break-up of the old Yugoslavia.
The summit in the Bosnian capital brings together Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica, his Croatian counterpart Stipe Mesic and the members of Bosnia's tripartite presidency -- Muslim member Beriz Belkic, Serb Zivko Radisic and Croat Jozo Krizanovic.
Security was high for the first meeting of the three leaders since their 1995 meeting in Dayton, Ohio, when under international pressure they hammered out a blueprint to end Bosnia's 1992-95 war.
On the eve of the summit NATO-led peacekeepers in Bosnia set up vehicle checkpoints at all road entrances and exits in Sarajevo, following what Bosnian television said was tipoff on possible incidents during the meeting.
A spokesman for the NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) confirmed security controls in Sarajevo had been increased, but denied this was a part of any particular operation.
The declaration of Bosnia's independence from the former Yugoslav federation ten years ago, opposed by Belgrade-backed Bosnian Serbs, triggered Bosnia's 1992-95 war, which claimed 200,000 lives and forced more than two million people to flee their homes.
More than 7,000 Muslims were killed in Srebrenica in July 1995, when Bosnian Serb forces overran the UN-protected enclave in the worst massacre in Europe since World War II.
Croatia was also engulfed in a 1991-95 war against rebel ethnic Serbs backed by Belgrade.
The last trilateral talks among the presidents of the three Balkan countries brought together Yugoslavia's then president Slobodan Milosevic, now on trial at the UN warcrimes court in the Hague, Bosnia's Alija Izetbegovic and Croatia's autocratic Franjo Tudjman.
Tudjman died in December 1999 and Izetbegovic stepped down last year as a Muslim member of Bosnia's presidency and as the head of his nationalist Muslim party, the Party of Democratic Action.
Macedonia and Slovenia also formed part of the former Yugoslavia, but were not taking part in the meeting.
The Bosnian presidency has described Monday's summit as "one of the most important events" since the country's 1992-95 war.
Belkic said he expected the summit's final declaration "to lead to stabilization and economic integration of the region."
The issues of property rights, social protection, return of refugees, economic cooperation and the possible joint access of the three states to foreign markets was to top the agenda.
Relations between the three Balkan countries continued to be tense until moderates started taking over in 2000.
Moderates won the elections in Bosnia and Croatia in 2000, and in October the same year Yugoslavia's Milosevic was overthrown from power in a popular revolt.
After the ouster of Milosevic, Sarajevo established diplomatic relations in December 2000 with the new reformist Yugoslav authorities.
Since 2000, Sarajevo, Belgrade and Zagreb have signed a number of accords on cooperation, notably economic tie-ups. Although officials from the three countries have held numerous bilateral meetings, this will be the first trilateral meeting since Dayton.

NATO security in Bosnia stepped up ahead of summit

SARAJEVO, July 14 (AFP) - NATO-led peacekeepers in Bosnia set up vehicle checkpoints Sunday at all road entrances and exits in Sarajevo on the eve of a summit of Bosnian, Croatian and Yugoslav leaders including Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica.
Bosnian television said tighter controls followed a tip-off on possible incidents during the meeting, but police could not confirm this.
SFOR troops were stopping and inspecting mainly buses and trucks but also some private cars, Bosnian television reported.
A spokesman for the NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) confirmed security controls in Sarajevo had been increased, but denied this was a part of any particular operation.
However, a police official, who asked not to be named, told AFP that increased controls were "in a way linked to the (Sarajevo) summit and will continue throughout the day on Monday."
The Monday session, focusing on cooperation and reconciliation, brings together members of Bosnia's tripartite presidency -- Muslim member Beriz Belkic, Serb Zivko Radisic and Croat Jozo Krizanovic -- and their Croatian and Yugoslav counterparts, Stipe Mesic and Vojislav Kostunica.
The last time the presidents of the three Balkan countries met was in 1995 in Dayton, Ohio in 1995, when they convened under pressure from the international community to end Bosnia's war.
Meanwhile posters appeared in central Sarajevo over the weekend showing a smiling Kostunica apparently holding an assault rifle during Serbia's 1998-99 crackdowns on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.
Accompanying posters read: "Srebrenica, genocide, concentration camp."
Both posters were produced by an Islamic youth organization. The declaration of Bosnia's independence from the former Yugoslav federation ten years ago, opposed by Belgrade-backed Bosnian Serbs, triggered the 1992-95 war, which claimed 200,000 lives and forced more than two million people to flee their homes.
More than 7,000 Muslims were killed in Srebrenica in July 1995, when Bosnian Serb forces overran the UN-protected enclave in the worst massacre in Europe since World War II.

U.N. condemns throat-cutting poster in Kosovo

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, July 14 (Reuters) - The U.N. mission in Kosovo condemned on Sunday a poster with a color photograph apparently showing a Serb paramilitary cutting the throat of an ethnic Albanian teenaged boy.
The grisly poster, naming the alleged Kosovo Serb perpetrator, was plastered on walls in the provincial capital Pristina this weekend and could also be seen in the predominantly ethnic Albanian part of the flashpoint town of Mitrovica.
It shows a man clad in camouflage and wearing a black baseball cap, his smiling face clearly visible as he stands above a boy evidently an ethnic Albanian, who is on his knees.
The man holds the boy's head up with one hand and cuts his throat with a knife in the other, as blood gushes from the wound.
It was not immediately clear where the authentic-looking photograph came from or who was behind the poster, which said in big capital letters: ``DO NOT ALLOW CRIMINALS TO COME BACK TO KOSOVO.''
The poster appeared as international officials in Kosovo were stepping up efforts to encourage more returns of minority Serbs who fled the province after NATO's 1999 bombing campaign, in fear of Albanian vengeance.

``These posters are disgraceful...designed to convey a message completely antagonistic to what people are trying to achieve here,'' said Simon Haselock, spokesman for the U.N.-led administration of the southern Yugoslav province.

He told Reuters he hoped ``people will not take them seriously.''
The poster, which did not identify the victim, also quotes what it describes as witnesses as saying the Serb man took part in crimes committed against an ethnic Albanian family in 1999, when Serbia still ruled the province.
A spokesman for U.N. police in Kosovo said he did not know whether the photograph was genuine, but that in any event the posters were illegal.

``The only thing that the posters prove is that the persons putting them up committed a criminal act themselves,'' police spokesman John Chapman said.

Serb forces and paramilitaries are accused of carrying out widespread atrocities against Kosovo's Albanian majority when Slobodan Milosevic, now standing trial at the war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, was president of Yugoslavia.
The province was placed under U.N. administration after Belgrade pulled out its forces at the end of NATO's 11-week bombing to end Serbian repression.

About 180,000 Serbs subsequently fled Kosovo. Many of those who remain live in enclaves protected by heavily armed NATO-led peacekeepers.
Kosovo's U.N. governor, German diplomat Michael Steiner, visited Belgrade earlier this month, discussing Serb returns and other issues with Yugoslav leaders. Kosovo's Albanians want independence from Serb-dominated Yugoslavia.

Bosnian, Croatian, Yugoslav presidents to meet in Sarajevo

Sarajevo (dpa) - The Bosnian, Croatian and Yugoslav presidents are to meet on Monday in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo for the first such gathering after a decade of conflict in the former Yugoslavia. Croatian President Stjepan Mesic and Yugoslav Vojislav Kostunica are to meet with the Bosnian tripartite state presidency members, chaired by Moslem Beriz Belkic, the Bosnian presidency confirmed. They are to discuss improving cooperation, particularly in trade, as well as problems such as organized crime, illegal migration and the fate of people missing since the regional conflicts flared.

Balkans leaders in historic summit

Bosnians are still rebuilding their lives after the war

By Matthew Price
BBC correspondent in the Balkans

The Presidents of Bosnia, Croatia and Yugoslavia are due to sign an historic agreement later on Monday. Their meeting in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, is the first time the leaders have come together in such a forum since the wars, which tore their countries apart. The agreement is designed to be a solid step towards improving co-operation between the countries.
It may only be the symbolic signing of a piece of paper but the meeting is being seen in this region as an important moment.
Not since the wars of the 1990s have the country's leaders all sat down at the same table and pledged to work together to improve co-operation between their countries.

Working together
It is a co-operation that is badly needed. Even seven years on, many refugees of the war have still not been able to return to their former homes. There are people unable to collect pensions since the war forced them to move from the country they had spent their lives working in. The agreement will also see the countries working towards a more relaxed visa regime so that people will be able to travel across the area more freely. But in the heart of the Bosnian countryside, not everyone is convinced the meeting will yield results.
The Denarovic family is having a barbecue outside the house they live in. It is not, however, their house. They are Muslims who fled their home during the war. They still have not been able to return to their village and Abdullah Denarovic does not believe politicians will speed up the process.

"Things could change but the politicians won't respect the agreements," he said. "They put the signature on whatever they want but nothing comes out of it."

Nevertheless, Monday's meeting is being seen by many here as a positive step on the road to reconciliation. The agreement will add to some more concrete changes already made.
Earlier this month regular flights started up between Sarajevo and Belgrade and there are already many services to Croatia. And this summer, efforts have been made - for a few months at least - to relax the visa regime between the three countries, making it easier for old friends and relatives to travel to see each other.

The dangers of a world court

Chicago Tribune

When the Israeli army went into the West Bank last spring to smash what Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called "the infrastructure of terrorism," the Bush administration and most Americans saw the offensive as a legitimate act of self-defense. But elsewhere, Sharon's government was roundly vilified. Angry rallies took place across Europe. The European Parliament urged member states to impose economic sanctions against the Jewish state. A United Nations official called the Jenin incursion "morally repugnant."

That quarrel betrays a deep divide between the U.S. and much of the international community, including some of our most valued allies in Europe. It's now on display over the ICC--which evokes enthusiastic support on the other side of the Atlantic but great skepticism in the Bush administration. Its resistance has generated a torrent of criticism, but the U.S. government would be irresponsible to subject itself to an unaccountable court that may become a vehicle for anti-American sentiment.

The ICC was conceived in a 1998 treaty signed by 139 nations, including the U.S. But President Bill Clinton insisted on changes in the rules for the court and never asked the Senate to ratify the accord. The Bush administration has "unsigned" it, while asking that UN peacekeepers be immune from prosecution. After a bit of brinkmanship the UN Security Council agreed Friday to a 12-month delay in investigations or prosecutions of peacekeepers from countries (such as the U.S.) that have not ratified the treaty.
If supporters of the court really wanted it to focus on grave abuses of human rights, the exemption requested by Washington would not have been controversial. UN peacekeepers are hardly the most deserving candidates for war crimes prosecutions.

The administration is right to fear that the U.S. could become a target for an ICC version of Kenneth Starr. No country plays a bigger role in assuring the peace and security of the world. When the world wants action against atrocities, it's the U.S. that is called on to intervene.
With an unfettered ICC, though, such intervention could end up the basis for prosecution. After the American military carried out an 11-week bombing campaign in response to Serbian human rights abuses in Kosovo, the war crimes tribunal in The Hague seriously considered prosecuting NATO officials. Many of the offenses that the ICC can prosecute are so vague that presidents and generals can't be sure what's illegal. How about the detentions of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters at the U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay--which many foreign governments and human rights groups have condemned?

Before the U.S. can safely submit itself to the judgments of an international criminal court, it has to be part of a firm global consensus on what constitutes a war crime and what doesn't. That consensus may be reached someday, but not anytime soon. U.S. acceptance of the ICC should wait until then.

THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT

Court is no threat to us

By M. Cherif Bassiouni - Chicago Tribune July 14, 2002

It is time to debunk some of the misleading information on the ICC that has appeared in the media mostly as a result of the Bush administration's campaign against the ICC.
The procedures of the ICC contain more guarantees than the American criminal justice system. They provide for every right guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution except for a jury trial.
More than three-fourths of countries do not have trial by jury. The ICC panel of three judges is as much a guarantee of fairness as lay jurors. Unlike some provisions of U.S. law, the ICC does not have "secret evidence" and provides for right to counsel under all circumstances, which the U.S. has recently abridged under the guise of the war on terrorism.
Concerns about a runaway prosecutor are out of place because any indictment has to be confirmed by a panel of three judges, subject to appeal before a panel of five judges. It would therefore require, in addition to the prosecutor, at least five runaway judges for an unfounded prosecution.

The prosecutor and the judges are selected by the Assembly of State Parties, which represents, at this time, 75 governments, including all European Union countries and all NATO allies except Turkey. The likelihood that all these countries will lose their good sense and elect judges and a prosecutor who are anti-American is nonsense.
Because the United States is unlikely to engage in genocide and crimes against humanity, the only concern is that some members of its military might commit war crimes.

But under ICC statutes, the U.S. can opt out of war crimes prosecutions for seven years. France has done so, and so can the U.S. Even if the U.S. does not opt out, the Law of Armed Conflict is well-established in the Geneva Conventions, and the same norms are part of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. There is no question that targeting and killing civilians is prohibited, as is torturing and killing POWs and the sick and injured in the field and at sea. Protected targets, such as hospitals and civilian installations, cannot be attacked. Those who commit such crimes violate not only international law but also U.S. law, and they are subject to U.S. prosecution.

So what's new or different with the ICC?

If U.S. personnel commit such crimes, the law requires their prosecution. Because the jurisdiction of the ICC is secondary to national criminal jurisdiction, a U.S. investigation or prosecution bars the ICC from exercising its jurisdiction. Therefore there is no logical basis to fear that U.S. military personnel will be prosecuted by the ICC if the U.S. follows its own laws. The only fear derives from a perverse logic, namely that the U.S. will cover up war crimes and subvert U.S. law by not properly investigating or prosecuting those who may have committed such crimes. The ICC might make that difficult. Under these conditions, the ICC prosecutor may seek to bring U.S. military personnel to trial.

Is this what the administration is really concerned about?

Even if this were to occur, the U.S. still could initiate its own investigation and prosecution, barring the ICC from exercising its jurisdiction. So where is the realistic risk of vexatious or unfair prosecutions?
The arguments offered by the administration in opposition to the ICC and the many articles written in the media supporting these positions are misleading. The real reason is that in military operations, mistakes happen, and the U.S. does not want to expose itself to embarrassment by investigating and revealing these mistakes.

Past errors
Consider, for example, the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during the Kosovo war. It was a mistake, but one the U.S. would not want to admit publicly. Certainly it would not want to reveal how it occurred.
Selection of military targets, particularly with respect to aerial bombardment, involves decisions based on information from various intelligence sources. Some of them may be faulty or insufficient and result in error. This would embarrass the agencies involved.
Such a case was the bombing of a shelter in Baghdad during the gulf war that killed several hundred civilians. Intelligence from satellite imagery revealed the shelter had been built as a military command and control post, a valid military target. But the lack of human intelligence on the ground prevented confirmation of that, thus resulting in human tragedy.

More recently, in Afghanistan, the U.S. bombed a wedding celebration, killing dozens of civilians. While this attack is still under investigation by the military, it appears that the firing of rifles as part of the festivities was mistaken for firing against flying aircraft. On its face, it appears unreasonable that the firing of rifles would be confused with anti-aircraft or missile fire against an aircraft at several thousand feet altitude.

These and other examples are clearly mistakes, but they can sometimes give rise to questions about responsibility for the error. That is what is at stake, the chance that an error could lead to a prosecution.

The U.S. military has a choice: to cover up such mistakes or determine whether individual responsibility exists and whether an apology or compensation is due to those who suffered the consequences of such errors. A cover-up for such errors violates U.S. law, and the ICC may make it difficult.

Should that be a reason to oppose it?

Following law protects U.S.

The ICC is not a threat to U.S. military operations abroad if they are conducted in accordance with international and U.S. law. This is the conclusion of other major powers that also contribute to such operations. Britain and France, as part of the 75 countries that have already ratified the ICC, have concluded that the benefits of the court outweigh whatever detriment may exist. Can it be that only this administration has insights about ICC dangers that so many allies and friends lack?

The international community is grateful to the U.S. for its role in the preservation of peace, and it is not likely to target the United States with unwarranted efforts to prosecute its military personnel. But it is also not willing to give it carte blanche to conduct military operations without regard to the same laws to which the U.S. is holding others accountable. The problem is not with the ICC, but with our double standard.

Since World War II, more than 250 conflicts worldwide have produced estimates from 70 to 170 million casualties. The major perpetrators have benefited from impunity. It behooves the U.S. to support the goals of international criminal justice and to end such impunity. To prosecute those who commit genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes is certainly valuable enough for the U.S. to support the ICC, even though it may at times have to answer embarrassing questions.

We cannot be the leader of the world only by virtue of having the mightiest military power. We must also provide moral leadership and support international criminal justice without double standards.

Serbia faces further rail disruption

BELGRADE (B92) - Negotiations will take place tomorrow morning in a bid to avoid another one-hour warning strike of Serbia's rail workers. The vice-president of the Serbian rail workers' union said the strike committee would meet with the management of the Belgrade rail transport company first thing tomorrow. Miroslav Jeremic said the strike would be averted if agreement is reached by 12 noon and the government offers guarantees for its implementation. Rail workers are demanding the government and railway management stick to an agreement reached in March by which workers' wages should increase by 1 percent each month. Jeremic said a "compromise solution" had been in the table during negotiatios on Thursday but that the government had refused to endorse the agreement.

Lilic freed of Serbian secret burden

BELGRADE (B92) - Former Yugoslav president Zoran Lilic has been freed of his obligation to protect state secrets pertaining to Serbian national security, ahead of his appearance at the trial of Slobodan Milosevic, his lawyer told B92 on Saturday. Dragan Saponjic said the Serbian government had taken the decision and that he expected the federal authorities to follow suit. Lilic arrived in The Hague on Friday having been subpoenaed by the tribunal prosecution to testify against Slobodan Milosevic.

Labus looking to be "first among equals"

VALJEVO (B92) - Yugoslavia's prominent deputy prime minister, Miroljub Labus, has confirmed he will stand for Serbian president at the coming elections. Labus, who is one of the leaders of the economic think-tank G17 Plus, said he would wait for elections to be called before formally announcing his candidacy. He told reporters in Valjevo yesterday evening that the future president must be "first among equals" and should command the support of not just one but many parties. Incumbent Serbian President Milan Milutinovic has been indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal for alleged crimes in Kosovo. The authorities in Belgrade have ruled out handing him over until his mandate expires.
Presidential elections are expected to be called for September. Asked if it was fair that elections be held under the old, Milosevic-era constitution, when a new constitution is expected by January 5, Labus told B92: "Serbia needs a new president, I don't think there's any chance there'll be a new constitution by January 5." He pointed out that Serbia's governing coalition no longer commands the majority it once did.
"But, all the same, when a new constitution is adopted there'll be elections again, and that's the risk," he added.

COMMENT & ANALYSIS: The Wilsonian veneer of US foreign policy

By ANATOL LIEVEN - Financial Times 07/15/2002

When Bill Clinton was in charge of US foreign policy, he was often accused of "Wilsonianism" by his conservative critics. The phrase was drawn from President Woodrow Wilson's promotion of democracy, self-determination and international law during and after the first world war.
For these critics, it became a synonym for the alleged humanitarian idealism of the Clinton administration - particularly its naive confidence in America's ability to transform other societies. They argued that this philosophy resulted in costly and unnecessary overseas interventions, and the subjugation of US national interests to those of foreign states.
Since George W. Bush's speech last month calling for, among other things, the democratic reform of the Palestinian Authority and the democratization of Iraq, some of these same commentators have lined up to praise his new "Wilsonianism". They have tried to elevate his remarks into a "Bush Doctrine" and to use the language of liberal international idealism in the service of their various goals.
As an intellectual, political and propaganda maneuver, this tactic is something of a tour de force. After all, it is hard to argue against democracy as a good in itself. The new approach wrong-foots liberal opponents of the administration's policies in the Middle East and elsewhere, and provides cover to Tony Blair and any other western leaders who could be persuaded to support a war against Iraq.
The approach also reflects some truths about conditions in both the Palestinian territories and Iraq. Many Palestinians have long been unhappy with the corruption and lack of democracy in the Palestinian Authority, while the horrors of Saddam Hussein's tyranny are notorious.
But there are many reasons to be wary. For one thing, the credibility of Mr Bush's "Wilsonianism" is undermined by the hostility of many in the administration to nation-building. This hostility has been reflected in relative political, military and financial indifference to Afghanistan now the Taliban and al-Qaeda's forces in the country have been defeated. The suspicion is that, once the Bush administration has used the pretext of creating democracy to smash a regime it dislikes, it will be uninterested in the future of that democracy.
As far as the Palestinians are concerned, Mr Bush's approach looks at best like an attempt to create the impression of an active US peace policy until Mr Hussein can be defeated, after which the US administration may perhaps take a genuine look at the peace process. At worst, the lack of a Palestinian democracy will be used as an excuse by the US and Israel for delaying indefinitely an end to Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the creation of a Palestinian state within legitimate and viable borders. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict will simply be allowed to continue.
This is certainly the intention of at least some advocates of the "Bush Doctrine". Among the first to argue that a Palestinian democracy is essential for a peace settlement was Natan Sharansky, Israel's deputy prime minister and housing minister. Mr Sharansky's party opposes the creation of the most basic conditions for a Palestinian state, and indeed contains advocates of the transfer of Palestinians from the West Bank - a policy that would amount to ethnic cleansing. How are the Palestinians supposed to make progress towards an exacting standard of democratic statehood under such conditions of military occupation and prolonged curfew, with the borders of the future state wholly undefined?
In the case of Iraq, the Wilsonian case for US intervention would appear much stronger. With some massaging of history, a few of the same arguments that justified western interventions in the Balkans and Sierra Leone can be applied to Iraq.
But a unilateral US war with Iraq would actually be a travesty of Wilsonian principles. While Wilson was certainly prepared to use US armed force in pursuit of his aims, the core of his internationalist philosophy was a commitment to the development of international institutions and international law. This is something for which the US nationalists who now misuse his name have open contempt.
In this regard, it is revealing to compare the cases of Kosovo and Iraq. While Nato acted in Kosovo without the approval of the United Nations, it at least had the approval of the great majority of states on Kosovo's own continent of Europe. Exactly the reverse would be the case with a US war against Mr Hussein - which is opposed by almost all Middle Eastern states except Israel.
Skepticism about the Bush administration's true commitment to the spread of democracy is strengthened by the tendency of the US right to support ruthless dictatorships when these are seen to serve US interests. American and Israeli hardliners speak of dictatorships (usually with specific reference to the Muslim world) as inherently treacherous and aggressive. But this is less a reflection of political philosophy than an accusation that Arab political culture is so low that no genuine compromise with Arab states or movements is possible.
This approach by the hardliners illustrates a fundamental flaw even in true Wilsonian thinking. The liberal belief that western democracy can be easily planted in every society has an unfortunate side-effect with echoes of the western imperial past. For if certain nations persistently fail to develop democracy - or what our ancestors would have called "western civilization" - the assumption is that they must be somehow inherently inferior. They can therefore be legitimately conquered and reformed by superior civilizations.
In the past, such interventions were supposedly "for their own good"; but all too often, they turned out to be for the good only of their conquerors. They also produced repeated cycles of human tragedy. In recognizing that the record of post-colonial states across the world has often been a frightful one, we should not forget that western imperialism too was often a deeply malignant force.

Arrests Provoke Unrest in Kosovo

Albanians Fear War Crimes Charges After Ex-Rebels Seized

By Nicholas Wood - The Washington Post, July 15, 2002

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia -- Nearly 1,000 demonstrators gathered here last week to protest the arrest by U.N. police of former ethnic Albanian guerrillas accused of abducting and torturing fellow Albanians at the end of the 1999 NATO bombing campaign in Yugoslavia.
The demonstrators waved banners as they walked down the city's central boulevard and chanted "Down with UNMIK," the acronym for the U.N. mission that has run Kosovo since 1999. The march ended outside a theater, where speakers accused the United Nations of attempting to denigrate the Albanian struggle for liberation.
The demonstration was triggered by the arrest of about a dozen former members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), the guerrilla group that fought Serb security forces, for trial in local U.N. courts. Most of the men have been charged with crimes relating to the war.
Many Albanians now fear that their capture will lead to indictments of other Albanians by the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague. The tribunal has already called several several Serbs, including former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, to account for alleged war crimes in the 1998-99 Kosovo conflict.
The protest, on Friday, was the second anti-U.N. demonstration last week in this solidly ethnic Albanian provincial capital. On Tuesday, crowds pelted police with stones.
U.N. officials view the protests as the work of a small and voluble minority and so far have contained them. But they worry that much larger, potentially destabilizing protests will erupt if the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague takes the likely step of indicting ethnic Albanians.
Senior U.N. aides say that by early fall, the tribunal will charge as many as three senior KLA commanders with war crimes. If that happens, U.N. authorities here say they will arrest them, but that the arrests could cause mayhem in the streets.
"The support we have might turn to the contrary," said Michael Steiner, who heads the U.N. mission here. "Of course there could be unrest, but I don't have a choice. I think I have to accept the risk because we have to follow instructions from The Hague."
NATO launched its bombing campaign to force Serb forces to halt a violent crackdown by the Yugoslav army and Serb security forces on the separatist KLA and Albanian civilians in Kosovo, a province of the main Yugoslav republic, Serbia. The war ended with the withdrawal of Yugoslav and Serb forces and the establishment of the U.N. administration, which set a policy of helping Albanians and Serbs live at peace with each other in Kosovo.
But U.N. officials say that hundreds of Serbs in Kosovo were killed at the end of the war as ethnic Albanians took revenge for crimes committed by Serb security forces. There are also credible accounts of KLA attacks on civilian members of the province's Serb minority during the war.
Politicians in Serbia, noting that they have handed over indicted Serbs, including Milosevic, have been pushing the tribunal to indict Albanians. The court's failure to do so three years after the war's end is widely seen in Serbia there as proof that it is biased.
For the province's ethnic Albanian majority, the war is seen as a heroic struggle for independence from Serb oppression, and talk of war crimes trials is unpopular. Already, senior Kosovo Albanian politicians are speaking out against the United Nations.
The prime minister of Kosovo's coalition government, Bajram Rexhepi, a former KLA doctor, said the recent arrests were politically motivated and calculated to damage political parties led by former KLA commanders before local elections are held in October.
The ethnic Albanian media have also strongly criticed the U.N. police. The state television channel, Radio Television Kosova, showed pictures of a house where U.N. police recently staged a raid and arrested eight men over the killing of a former ethnic Albanian police officer, his wife, son and two others. The police officer had worked with the Serbian Interior Ministry police until 1999.
The governments of Serbia and Croatia have ridden out similar cries of politically motivated war crimes cases with relative ease. But U.N. officials and local analysts say the same may not be possible in Kosovo, where the United Nations has spent the last three years building up such institutions as the judiciary and the police service from scratch.
"Serbia has been a state since the 19th century, whereas the Kosovo government has been in place for just four months," said Ylber Hysa, the director of KACI, a Kosovo-based research group. The arrest of senior Kosovo Albanian politicians, he said, "would have serious consequences for institution-building in the province."
Hysa said that while part of Kosovo's Albanian majority appears polarized over the war crimes indictments, the majority could still support them. He said it is critical, however, that any arrests not be seen as a balancing act designed to please the government of Serbia or foreign countries. "It will provoke a reaction from people, especially if it is viewed as an attempt to equate the guilt of the KLA with that of Serbia and Milosevic," he said.
But U.N. officials said they were confident that most of Kosovo's Albanian population would go along with arrests. Some KLA members are believed to be involved with organized crime, an association that has hurt their popularity.
"The Hague was, after all, the institution that led to the arrest of Milosevic," said Steiner. "I think that people know that. And even if they might not like it that one of their own ethnicity is arrested, I don't think that people will go so far that this will make them turn around 180 degrees."